From time-to-time, it becomes necessary for law-enforcement officers to stop a vehicle for the purpose of inspecting the vehicle and/or investigating a vehicle operator. Once the investigation has been completed without incident, the vehicle and its operator are allowed to drive away from the scene of the stop. However, on certain occasions, a suspect wishing to avoid capture or the inspection of his vehicle may flee the scene of the stop prior to completion of the investigation. In such cases, the fleeing vehicle is pursued, typically at high speeds, by one or more law enforcement vehicles until the suspect is caught. As a consequence of the high-speed chase, often covering long distances, the law enforcement officers, innocent motorists traveling on roadways, and even the suspect are susceptible to a risk of injury to themselves and their property.
To prevent a fleeing suspect and his vehicle from escaping, vehicle immobilizers are often utilized. Such vehicle immobilizers are typically spike strips which include a set of spikes to be placed across a roadway and aimed at and adapted to puncture a tire of an oncoming vehicle. A typical vehicle immobilizer includes a set of spikes positioned to engage one or more tires of the vehicle. There is nothing to prevent the vehicle from fleeing in an opposite direction in an effort to completely avoid driving over the spikes and damaging the tires. Moreover, the vehicle immobilizer as described above is fairly large and bulky so as to be inconvenient to transport and difficult to store in a small space, such as in a trunk of the law enforcement vehicle prior to deployment. In this same regard, when not in use, the sharp spikes associated with the vehicle immobilizer may accidentally damage government property or injure individuals in charge of handling the device.